The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been much in the news and not in a good way. Under siege is more like it.

The Wall Street Journal has been especially diligent in reporting the disgruntlement of farmers over the USDA’s faulty agriculture projections. It seems to be harder and harder to accurately predict how much of a given commodity farmers in a particular region of the world will produce. Rather than accept the department’s explanation that climate change and the extreme weather events – drought, flood, blight, infestation, etc. – that come with it have turned forecasting into a crapshoot, frustrated farmers are convinced that either bureaucratic ineptitude or some sort of conspiracy is involved.

The USDA insists it’s doing its best to understand what most people older than 30 who venture outdoors from time to time can hardly deny: Our weather ain’t what it used to be.

Unlike the computer models that brought the economy to its knees when Wall Street put too much faith in rising home prices while ignoring such underlying issues as skyrocketing household debt, meteorologists plug into their computer models as many known factors as they can when making their predictions.

These range from air chemistry to sea ice levels. As recently as 2005, we were in a situation where ovrerall warming was characterized by record cooling. Those numbers are helping scientists understand Europe’s current near-record cold. They’ve shown that when sea ice melts, the effect is to shift Arctic air south to the continent.

“Other explanations linking cold winters and global warming include reduced solar activity and changes in the Gulf Stream,” according to Vladimar Petoukhov, a climatologist at the Podham Institute for Climate Impact in Germany. While these are “less strongly correlated, the study concludes one could amplify the other.”

Note the scientist’s lack of affiliation with any private company. The people doing these models have nothing to gain or lose from what they predict. This is the beauty of having publicly funded universities and departments like the USDA running the models, as opposed to Wall Street banks.

The USDA, which relies heavily on models like the one called ACHAMS5 that has shed light on how warming causes cooling, is hardly responsible for the fact that such models are not crystal balls.

What astonishes me is that farmers aren’t singing the praises of those who perform this grueling work. At least someone is trying to get a handle on what’s going on with the weather. Clearly, the farmers themselves aren’t equipped for the job.

In all the furor over frozen canals in Venice, a story of keen interest to gardeners has been shunted aside. The USDA’s new climate map was recently released.

Sure enough, the Twin Cities have moved up a notch. They’re shown as Zone 4a (30 degrees below zero to 25 below). That’s a significant change from the map released in 1980, which showed the whole southern half of the state in Zone 4b (25 below to 20 below).

The new map includes 13 zones. Two are new, and they represent regions warmer than the previous map drawn in 1980 accounted for. The map is generally one 5-degree half-zone warmer over much of the United States. Averages are taken from weather data gathered from 1976 to 2005. (The previous map’s most recent data were collected in 1986.)

South Minneapolis gardeners who yearn to grow Japanese maples (and many other Zone 5 plants no longer “off limits”) were delighted to find the new zone map showed a tiny splotch of pink denoting their presence in Zone 5. My guess is that if temperatures recorded from 2006 to 2011 had been factored in, St. Paul would show up in Zone 5 as well.

Sadly, the beleaguered USDA caved to political pressure when it tacked the following nonsensical disclaimer onto its announcement of the new map:

“Climate changes are usually based on trends in overall average temperatures recorded over 50-100 years. Because the USDA (Plant Hardiness Zone Map) represents 30-year averages of what are essentially extreme weather events (the coldest temperature of the year), changes in zones are not reliable evidence of whether there has been global warming.”

Gardeners know better. And even as they welcome all those sexy Zone 5 plants, they are fully aware that the downside of warmer winters outweighs any positives even in the garden.

Unpredictable weather is harder on plants than consistent cold and snow. This winter will be tough on plants not just because they’re unprotected but because they went into dormancy stressed from lack of moisture and the drought looks likely to continue into spring.

Uneven temperatures are especially hard on shallow-rooted plants and plants that aren’t well established. Frost-thaw cycles can heave plants right up out of the ground, roots and all.

Then, too, along with those Japanese maples come Japanese beetles and other bugs and blights that used to be unheard of here. Stink bugs are the new threat. Places where such insects are rare are of course more defenseless. Gardeners haven’t learned how to fend them off.

Our best weapon in lieu of high-tech panaceas is the same as always: Keep plants healthy. Water frequently, and conserve moisture. Don’t let it run off into the sewers. Create rain gardens. Install rain barrels. Mulch beds and compost garden debris and kitchen waste. Layer these amendments on the soil instead of digging them in to avoid destroying the delicate balance of microorganisms that live in the soil.

Bottom line: Climate change is about much more than a warming planet.

It has set in motion a domino effect of sweeping interrelated changes in everything from moisture patterns to species migration.

Its reverberations won’t be fully understood for many years to come. We need to stop fighting about whether it’s real and get on with the arduous and complicated business of dealing with it.

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